Bryan Meehan, Nude founder, talks to the Evening Standard.
We are becoming ever more concerned about what to put on–as well as in–our bodies. Here we test the purest products to tell you which really work.
Cleanse, tone and moisture: that is the mantra the beauty experts chant and women follow slavishly as part of their daily beauty regime. Yet new research has revealed that the average woman uses almost 20 beauty products a day and absorbs up to five pounds of chemicals through her skin every year.
Parabens (or preseveratives), sodium lauryl sulphate (produces lather), benzyl alcohol (used to create scent) and cocamide MEA (a binder in moisturiser) can get into the blood stream and have been linked to a range of conditions from skin irritation to the growth of tumours.
So while we smother ourselves in products promising to enhance our looks, we may actually be damaging our skin, seriously compromising our health and even promoting premature ageing.
Now, just as we have become so much more aware of our foods provenance, the quality and content of what we put on our skin has also become a priority for consumers.
Beauty ranges increasingly promise to be natural, organic, ethical and chemical free. But do they still work and are they actually better for us?
We introduce the faces behind the London based labels that are the biggest organic beauty ranges – from the long established from the brand new – to find out how clean their products really are.
BRYAN MEEHAN: NUDE
What they do:
Since it launched in Whole Foods Market this month, nude is the latest buzz word on beauty editors’ lips. As well as being 99% organic, nude products work to protect the skins natural “acid mantle” that protects it from external damage.
Bryan Meehan, who lives in Notting Hill, was one of the founders of Fresh & Wild organic food shops in 1998 and believes that life with his wife and three daughters has prepared him for the first foray into the beauty world. “We don’t claim to be perfect”, says Meehan but we are trying to educate women about the harm that sun and pollution causes to their skin and look for a cleaner, safer way of counteracting the effect. We decided to call our range nude because it is for beautiful skin with nothing to hide – the name’s clean but it’s also a little bit sexy”
USP: Nude uses pre and probiotics to rebalance to skins natural microflora to provide the optimum moisturising anti-ageing effect. The products protect against ageing, dehydration and inflammation while the natural ingredients such as baobab and avellana provide essential fatty acids to soften and boost skin radiance.
We say: the Cleansing Facial Oil (£22) feels rich and quenching and turns milky when mixed with water on the skins surface. The Hydrating Water (£18) along with the Advanced Smoothing Complex (£48), are perfect combination, leaving your skin feeling refreshed and nourished. Look out for the nude supplement, to hydrate and protect against ageing – due to be launched this month. www.nudeskincare.com